>I’m interested in studying, what level of experience should I have?
Keep in mind that all of this only be applied to the University I go to. The procedures or experiences may vary a lot in the university you apply.

Photography experience is certainly expected. Studying photography is no evening class on how to operate a camera. So you need to know how to work with a digital and analog camera (35mm).
You also need to be able to take meaningful and well composed pictures. Most of the stuff in the RPT would’t make the cut, your holiday pictures won’t make the cut and your cat pictures won’t make it either. It is expected that you know now to work in a series, single pictures rarely work (this is something /p/ is particularly bad in).

>which University should I choose?
I don’t know, do your research and do a lot of it. The bad name studying photography came from bad places and bad people. Art school is always greeted with smiles because everything calls itself art school to get as much money from hipsters as possible.
Find out the big names in your country and don’t settle with less. If you are afraid that you aren’t good enough for that place, you probably aren’t so go out and practice.
A degree from an obscure place won’t gain you anything. Do it right and choose the best.
Getting in contact with people that study there is a great way if you can get over your social anxiety. You can also take a look at the bachelor works of the universities. If you only see shit then don’t apply. Look for graduates and follow their work, if you notice that a lot of successful guys studied at a certain university, you should take a look at that place. Go though the list of teaching staff and look at their work. Stay away if they are on evening class level shooting weddings and look for the ones with renowned professionals.
You can also look out for the events on campus. I’ve seen universities that don’t support their students at all, others give them time and resources to exhibit their work and push them. They invite famos photographers for lectures and workshops, portfolio reviews or exhibitions on campus.
Another pro tip is to look for a university with other creative study paths. You don’t want to be surrounded by business and law people all day. More of that later ..

>What’s the application process like?

To ensure a particular level of skill and experience you have to apply with pictures rather than grades. You have to have a portfolio of around 20-25 pictures, so around 5 series. In addition to that you will get a homework from most of the universities I know. You’ll get one word and have to bring a series in your application based around that word (for example: the word was „home“ for me. Now you don’t necessarily have to take pictures of your home, but work around the word and create something that makes sense).
If you have your portfolio and homework printed, that is professionally printed, you write a short explanation for each of your series and think of a name and then you can go to the university on the day they told you after you applied.
You’ll spend all day sitting there with your competition until you are up for review. You’ll hand your stuff in and the photography staff will have a look at it, eventually ask you some questions about you and your work and then it’s waiting time again.
The next part differs a lot from place to place, I know of three types in my country:
>you pack your stuff and leave
That’s it. You can go home and wait weeks for the results, you’ll receive a letter with your grade and can enter round 2.

>You’re in round 2
A preselection of people make it to round 2 on the next day. Get a place to stay and start scouting the area if you are unfamiliar with it. On the next day you get another word to make a series out of. If you forgot your camera you might have a problem. You have around 3 hours to bring a series of pictures back, printed of course.
The results are analyzed once again and some people make the final cut
>You’re in round 2, but you chose to apply for sadistic university
You guessed it, that’s what I went though and I wasn’t prepared at all.
Imagine the same procedure as above, you get one word and have to make a series of pictures in a short amount of time. But I didn’t get to use my old camera. The university handed out some analog 35mm camera (forgot which one) to everyone with 6 pictures left on the film. The objective was to bring a series of at least 5 pictures. The word was „backgorund“ and we had 3 hours as well.
Back in the university the film got developed and reviewed, that decided who got to stay and who had to leave.

Find out how your place handles this, get in contact with students that made it and gather tips. I wasn’t prepared at all and was pretty lucky I made it. With a little more preparation such as a light meter or basic knowledge of the town I was in I could have saved a lot of time and nerves.

>I made it, what now?
Congratulations, I hope you chose the right university because what I’m about to tell you know is only true for mine. I’m expecting other places on the same or higher level to give you similar experiences. Don’t get mad at me if you chose a shithole that doesn’t offer you the same experiance.

>first semester and second
>basic training
Where everyone is put on the same basic level. You have all types of photographers around you. Fashion people, portrait people, street people. Some only shoot digital, others solely work analog medium format. There are young talents and experienced photographers. So the first semester is all about getting used to your new situation and putting everyone on the same level.
Your photography isn’t the most important thing here and that is a little strange at first.
You’ll learn a lot about technical aspects you didn’t know mattered at all and have to soak in as much as you can because these are your basics and what puts you apart from all the amateurs out there. From light waves to sensitometry and the silver on your film, you’ll learn more about your camera than you could even imagine reading up on the internet because you thought most of it wouldn't matter.
Studying the masters of photography is just as important. Everything has been done before, so get your inspiration from legends and learn the historic backgrounds of the photographic eras. Learn the principles of composition in these pictures and apply them to your own work, start to develop a taste for stuff you haven’t even heard about.

>the gear
Play around with gear you would usually need to sell your house for and have people with countless years of experience tell you the tricks. From small to medium to large format, you’ll work with it all. Need a Hasselblad for a shooting? Ever wanted to do street with a Leica? Want to check out some pores by shooting a PhaseOne? No problem, you can rent everything there for free. And if you don’t want to leave the house you can always stay in the ridiculously equipped university studio, it’s the size of a school gym at my university, full Broncolor flash setups on each workplace. Gearfags paradise.
When you finish your rolls of film you can obviously develop them in your University, black and white as well as color. After that you can make prints of them in the room next to it, black and white as well as color, professional equipment for everything of course. If you want to scan your film you can do so on the drum scanners.
If you are the digital guy your University should have a smilier printer lineup as mine, with hand calibrated printer for prints up to 2x5m.

If all of that doesn’t bring a tear to your gear eye I don’t know what will. So once again, choose the right University and you’ll don’t have to worry about anything at all for the next years .. and probably fall in a deep void when it’s over.

The only thing lacking in your first semester will be your photography. Your work will consist of finger exercises similar to your homework in the beginning. You are assigned with a lot of small series and have to power though. The time to get real creative will follow later on.

>the people
There is nothing more wonderful than surrounding yourself with similar minded people. That’s why you are on /p/ right now. Now imagine everyone on /p/ being a skilled photographer and your friend. Now imagine the RPT:
Instead of getting only one reply to your picture „>shit, kill ur self“, you have a buch of people to talk to for hours. Your fellow students and the exchange you have with them is the most important part of studying photography and it is the part everyone from the outside doesn’t understand.
Getting lot and lots of different viewpoints on your work is the best way of improving. They open your mind up to stuff you haven’t though of yet, give you examples of other photographers work similar to yours that you didn’t know of. They enrich you as a person and you as a photographer.

If you make friends with them you’ll have friends in the business for a lifetime. Sure, not all are going to make it, but some do and they’ll remember all the drunk nights and deep talks you had when you where young. Who will they call if the can’t take a job because of scheduling reasons? You of course.

I know working photographers all over the world because of this. Networking is the most essential part of this. If you don’t think you can do that, don’t study photography.

>the staff
Get to know them. All of them. These are experts (If you made the right university decision) in their field and if they know you and like you you’ll have friends getting you jobs and opportunities later on. I spoke to a lot of graduates and plenty of them told me that they got their first job as an assistant because of one of our professors. I don’t go near the gear thread on /p/ or watch videos of idiots on the internet if I have gear related questions, I just go to the cafeteria and have lunch with the guy that runs the studio, the guy that is responsible for all the gear purchases and the guy teaching me the technical aspects of photography. After 10 minutes and some tasty tasty cafeteria food I know everything I need to know about all the aspects of my intended purchase.
Regular people don’t come in such situations, cherish them as long as you have access.

>thrid semester and upwards
One year later, you made it though the boring part. In this first year you advanced quicker as a photographer as before. No matter who I talked to, nobody learned that much about our craft that fast. Even the guys that were working photographers before made a huge leap towards becoming a real photographer .. and now you are getting started.

From now on your projects won’t consist of small stuff anymore. You’ll be working on one or two big projects in a semester, usually working towards a book or an exhibition. You can finally take your time and work on a project for half a year, with guidance from your professors and fellow students along the way. Projects take shape and grow, evolve and get you invested. You are no longer taking snapshots, you developed a sense for pictures and work towards a bigger goal.
My university spends a lot of time on excursions and if you chose the right one, yours will too. Are you into photojournalism? Well why don’t you go to a foreign country with the photojournalism professor, learning about that work right where you belong? Scout a project beforehand and have somebody with years of experience help you every day for two weeks. Or join the phonebook bootcamp, where your goal is it to scout a project, take the pictures, find the layout and print a book in one week, no matter where you are. Fashion people go to the fashion week, commercial people get taken to big studios, photo editors get to see agencies.

In the following semesters you are able to specialize yourself, while learning as much new stuff about yourself, as you do about the type of business you are about to enter. Besides your photography you will be reached in art and design history, learn about important laws and self employment, contracts and copyright. You get courses in self marketing and social media as well as holding presentations or writing essays. You don’t just learn how to take pictures, you learn how to be a competent photographer that can leave the place knowing how to make a living.

>tl;dr / summary
Studying photography is a fine line. It’s not essential, but it takes you places. It’s not important for your clients, but it gets you contacts. It’s not for everybody, but everybody that was willing to learn, learned a lot. But most importantly: It’s not the same everywhere you look. I can’t emphasize this enough: Choose the place where you want to study correctly, or you won’t share the same experiences that I did and won’t get as much out of it.
If you chose correctly and manage to get through you will grow into a photographer and won’t have any problems working in the field of your dreams. But don’t get the illusion that you will suddenly be in the promised land. You still have to work very hard, be excellent and promoting yourself and still have to stand out from the crowd of photographers. Nobody out there is waiting for you, there are countless other people that can do the job as as well as you can, for less money. Nobody will care about your degree, only about your portfolio. This study path can simply show you the way and push you out of the door, it’s your job to be good.

The main thing you’ll get out of this are the people and experiences, you’ll find very good friends working in the same field as you do. You’ll share jobs and recommend each other. If you manage to impress the professors you have the easiest foot in the door you can get, have a better time finding a job as an assistant as anyone else, get to know people that are usually way out of your reach. Studying photography can be a beautiful thing and the best time of your life, it can be a constant state of creativity, productivity and joy, shared with some of the best people you will get to know in life.

I’m sure I forgot quite a lot, just ask if anything is unclear.

>>2846879
http://pseudosticky.wikia.com/#Studying_Photography-should_you_do_it

File: Barnbaum_Art_of_Photography1.jpg (250 KB, 1798x1800) Image search: [Google]

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>>2846879
buy this book

read it start to finish, do not skip over film because you shoot digital or vice versa

contemplate your existence and the pictures/snapshots you have taken

wait a bit

read it again

then consider further education.